Journal of Applied Mathematics and Decision Sciences
Volume 2006 (2006), Article ID 96542, 16 pages
doi:10.1155/JAMDS/2006/96542

Factors affecting research productivity of production and operations management groups: An empirical study

George C. Hadjinicola and Andreas C. Soteriou

Department of Public and Business Administration, School of Economics and Management, University of Cyprus, Kallipoleos 75 Street, P.O. Box 20537, Nicosia 1678, Cyprus

Received 11 July 2004; Accepted 11 January 2005

Copyright © 2006 George C. Hadjinicola and Andreas C. Soteriou. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This paper identifies factors that promote research productivity of production and operations management (POM) groups of researchers in US business schools. In this study, research productivity of a POM group is defined as the number of articles published per POM professor in a specific period of time. The paper also examines factors that affect research quality, as measured by the number of articles published per POM professor in journals, which have been recognized in the POM literature as an elite set. The results show that three factors increase both the research productivity and the quality of the articles published by professors of a POM group. These factors are (a) the presence of a POM research center, (b) funding received from external sources for research purposes, and (c) better library facilities. Doctoral students do assist in improving research quality and productivity, but they are not the driving force. These results have important implications for establishing policy guidelines for business schools. For example, real-world problems are funded by external sources and have a higher probability of publication. Furthermore, schools could place more emphasis on external funding, as most engineering schools do, since groups receiving external funding are more productive in terms of research.